Year 9 Trip to ORF Stusios, Vienna

How do you fancy being a cameraman? Flying over a city? Sitting like a troll on your schoolmate’s shoulder?

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All this was possible on our trip to the Austrian TV Studios ORF in Vienna on Tuesday, 10th March. All of the Year 9 students participated in the trip and had the chance to see how television works, how visual tricks are made, what you need to wear to be a TV star. We also saw a studio fully prepared to broadcast a programme in the next couple of minutes.

We received a lot of interesting information about how a studio is set up ready for filming, how many lights are needed, how the set is made, and how long it takes to prepare for different kinds of programmes (sometimes more than a month). We also learnt a little bit about the history of cameras. Those early ones were certainly heavy and unwieldy. Today’s are also heavy, but thanks to clever balancing technology, a 250 Kg camera can be moved around with just one hand.

Here are just some of the students’ impressions:

“I liked the interaction in the trip: the blue screen.”

“When editing people into images and videos using blue background.”

“I liked seeing how the television shows were produced.”

“The second studio. It was amazing fun that you can move your body to other scene…”

ORF kindly gave us a DVD copy of our blue-room experiences, which we have viewed in class in the follow-up lessons. I’m not sure if anyone felt inspired to investigate a career in broadcasting, but at least students now have a better idea of how much work goes on behind the scenes.